Probably every business owner knows what a seal or a stamp is. Well, e-Seal in general is the same thing, the only difference — it’s in an electronic form. The most important thing here is that it belongs to a legal entity rather than a natural person.
Those who have been using e-signature, probably remember that before eIDAS regulation, documents of a legal entity could have been signed by an authorised person, most often, company’s CEO, with a personal electronic signature. What e-Seals have changed is that now a document by a legal person can be sealed with an e-Seal which does not belong to any concrete person in the organisation. Electronic seals are issued only to legal persons and are used to ensure the origin and integrity of documents or data.
e-Seals, however, can still be used in combination with electronic signatures but they are legally binding on their own too. According to eIDAS regulation, an electronic seal has the same legal power as a regular seal; it can’t be denied legal effect and admissibility as evidence in legal proceedings just because it is in an electronic form.
Just like electronic signatures, electronic seals are also divided into Advanced e-Seals and Qualified e-Seals.
An Advanced electronic seal (AdESeal) requires security features that ensure it is uniquely linked to the signatory, it is capable of identifying the signatory entity, it is created using seal creation data and it is linked to the data in such a way that any subsequent change of the data is detectable.
A Qualified electronic seal (QESeal) is an advanced electronic seal which provides additional level of assurance on the identity of the creator of the seal and an enhanced protection and level of assurance on the seal creation. A special device is required for the creation of QESeal (a qualified seal creation device, QSealCD).
Simply put, qualified e-Seal is more secure as it requires not only qualified certificate but also a qualified seal creation device while advanced e-Seal requires qualified certificate but seal creation device doesn’t need to be qualified.
Either way, both advanced and qualified e-Seals are of high security and can be used for automated sealing of large volumes of documents.
Still wondering whether you need it? Here are some benefits for you:
- legally binding – provides recognised proof of the origin and integrity of documents
- effective and time saving – it’s much faster than manual administration of paper documents
- secure – maximum data security guaranteed by trusted service providers
Read more about Dokobit e-Sealing solutions here.